


Vanya & Diego

by DottieSnark



Series: Some Family Bonding Won't Kill Us...Probably [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Canon Compliant, Drama, Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, One Shot, Panic Attacks, Pre-Canon, Siblings, Vanya's book
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-26
Updated: 2020-08-26
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26129044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DottieSnark/pseuds/DottieSnark
Summary: “What the Hell is this?” Diego sneered. He shook a book in her face. Her book. Vanya gulped. Uh-oh. This was not good.Diego confronts Vanya about her book.
Relationships: Diego Hargreeves & Vanya Hargreeves
Series: Some Family Bonding Won't Kill Us...Probably [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1910356
Comments: 1
Kudos: 50





	Vanya & Diego

"If you're raised to believe nothing about you is special, if the benchmark is extraordinary, what do you do if you're not?" After Vanya finished reading out loud the last sentence of her first chapter, she looked up at her audience. Three people. Four, if you counted the guy browsing for books in the back of the store. He had glanced over at Vanya occasionally while she read, but every time she looked up he looked away.

Since her initial book release, her audience sizes had been dwindling. Sales had taken a nosedive. No one cared about the ordinary sister of a now-defunct superhero group. The world had moved on. Maybe people would have cared if someone like Allison had released the book, but not Vanya. Not boring, uninteresting number seven who never amounted to anything. Who wasn't important. Who wasn't special.

Still, she didn't regret writing it. It was cathartic to get it all out in the open. To detail the abuses she watched her siblings suffer. To deal with her own neglect. To finally call out the old man for everything he did, every emotional scar he had inflicted. It was the right thing to do.

One person in the audience clapped twice and then everyone stood up and began walking away. No one even wanted to get their book signed anymore. Sighing, Vanya closed the book and began packing up her things. She had rehearsal in an hour. Her career as a writer might have tanked but at least she still had her music. That brought her what little comfort it could.

Picking up her messenger bag, she turned around only to walk straight into someone. Did somebody actually want their book signed?

"Oh! I'm sor…" Her voice trailed off as she looked up and found herself staring straight into her brother's eyes. "Diego."

"What the Hell is this?" Diego sneered. He shook a book in her face. Her book. Vanya gulped. Uh-oh. This was not good.

"You're mad." It wasn't a question. The vein popping out of his neck made it clear just how angry he was. It wasn't as if she was expecting her siblings to be happy about her exposing their secrets. But still, the level of rage hurt. She expected it maybe from Dad, but not Diego. Out of all her siblings, she thought he would be the most understanding. After all, he hated Dad the most.

"Of course, I'm mad. H-h-how c-could you?"

Vanya flinched. His stutter was back. Her book had gotten him so worked up that it was undoing all his hard work.

"I thought people needed to know what he did."

"It w-w-wasn't your r-right."

"Ms. Hargreeves," someone called from across the room. It was the store clerk. She was a tiny little thing, not much larger than Vanya, and she stood behind the cash register with her hand hovering over the phone. Her fingers trembled. "Is everything okay?"

Diego's shoulders raised and lowered with each ragged breath. His stature was so much larger than Vanya's. To the casual onlooker this confrontation looked bad. Vanya knew he wasn't a threat—Vanya had always been off-limits when things got physical growing up, an unspoken rule all of their siblings followed—but this store clerk didn't know that.

"It's fine," Vanya said, forcing a smile. Placate and disarm. She might not have superpowers or combat training, but she had her own tactics to control a situation. She needed them to survive their household. "He's leaving."

"We're not done here!" Diego screamed.

The clerk picked up the phone.

"Let's just go outside," Vanya said. She kept her voice level and calm, hiding the panic rising in her throat. Adrenaline spiked her nerves. If he kept this up, she would have to take her meds and she hated taking an extra dose before practice. They made her fingers feel sloppy.

Diego grunted but finally agreed. Vanya waved off the clerk and they were allowed to leave without any more commotion.

"What the Hell were you thinking?!" Diego started again as soon as they passed the threshold. The door hadn't even finished swinging closed behind them yet. "How could you do this to me?"

Panic swelled through her. Her fingers tingled and she struggled to take in deep breaths. She had several coping strategies for her panic attacks, ways of distracting her thoughts, but she couldn't exactly do any of them without ignoring Diego. And that would only anger him further. "It wasn't about you," she said.

"Wasn't about me? Chapter Two was literally called Diego."

A shiver went down her spine. He had read it. She had thought he had just seen the book, maybe heard some people talk about it, but that he would change his mind once he read it. But he had already read it and he hated it. Her whole body trembled. It felt like there were two invisible hands wrapped around her throat, squeezing. Her chest ached along with the other sensations.

How could Diego read about everything their dad put them through, put her through specifically, and then treat her like the enemy? Couldn't he see that she had suffered just as much as the rest of them? More in some ways?

"You told the world my secrets. Repeated things I told you in c-c-confidence."

"I needed it for the subtext."

"Do you think I wanted people to know how easily I let Dad manipulate me? How he pitted me against Luther for his affection and how I lost every single time? How I used to cry in my room about how much of a failure I was?" Diego blinked back tears.

Vanya still remembered all the times she caught Diego crying in his room. She had written about it at length. He hated to show weakness, she wrote, and not just because when Dad saw them crying he disciplined them for it. Luther never showed weakness and Diego was always comparing himself to him.

The first few times Vanya had caught him crying, Diego just screamed at her and slammed his door. Those first few times Vanya had gotten Mom to take care of him, but one time Mom was already busy, probably taking care of another one of their siblings; Vanya could no longer remember the specifics. She couldn't remember what had upset Diego that day either, just that over time Diego started to relax around her. Let his guard down. Let her comfort him. Eventually, she had became his confidant. He had told her about every little torture Dad devised for him. Every fight he had with Luther. Every prank he pulled with Ben and Klaus. Every dream he had for when he could finally leave the Academy. Every fear that plagued his nightmares.

And then some odd years later she went and published it in a book.

Oh, God. What had she done?

"I'm sorry Diego," Vanya said, choking back her own tears now. She still didn't regret what she had done. That book needed to be written. The world needed to know. But she regretted causing Diego this much pain. Maybe if she had just told him ahead of time about the book, or if she had just reached out to him before she published it and got a list of things that were off-limits…but she knew why she didn't do that. She knew if she had he would have told her everything was off-limits. He wouldn't have given her permission to write the book, and she couldn't live with keeping this story inside of her. It was selfish, but after 24 years of being the overlooked child didn't she deserve to be selfish just this once? No matter how much it hurt Diego or the others she still believed the book was the right choice.

She put her hands in her coat's pocket and felt around for her pills. "I really wasn't trying to hurt you," she said. "And I hope one day you'll understand why I had to write this."

"I think I'll understand why Dad did the things he did before I'll understand this."

Vanya flinched. There was nothing worse than being compared to their father.

"And how dare you tell people about my st-st-st—" When Diego couldn't get the word out, he slammed his fist against the brick wall of the closest building. The jagged look of his fingers told Vanya that he had broken them immediately upon impact. "Fuck!" he screamed.

"Oh my God! Are you okay? Let me take you to the ER."

"Stay the fuck away from me." Diego cradled his hand in his other arm. His voice lowered, with an even cadence. "You know, I always thought you were the one I could trust. That because of the way dad mistreated you, you weren't susceptible to his mind games. That you were above our petty squabbles. But I guess you're just as petty as the rest of us." Diego spit at her shoes. "You're dead to me. You're not my sister anymore."

He stormed off, leaving Vanya behind with one less brother.

First, Five had disappeared. Then Ben died. Now this. How much more could she stand to lose?

Vanya opened up her pill bottle.

**Author's Note:**

> I would like to thank [supinetothestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/supinetothestars) for beta reading this chapter and [Bambi_Princess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bambi_Princess/pseuds/Bambi_Princess) for coming up with the title of this series.


End file.
